The Middle of the Storm

Many times we refer to life as “smooth sailing” or speak of “rough waters” or “stormy weather ahead” in a metaphorical sense. The hymn “Jesus, Savior, Pilot Me” was written by Rev. Edward Hopper in the nineteenth century when he was pastor of a New York church for mariners. While his parishioners often experienced the literal perils of the sea, many Christians have come to love the hymn, which speaks metaphorically of Jesus guiding us through life. We call out: “Jesus, Savior, pilot me Over life’s tempestuous sea; Unknown waves before me roll, Hiding rock and treach’rous shoal. Chart and compass come from Thee. Jesus, Savior, pilot me” (LSB 715:1).

These days, when many of us fly more than we sail, Jesus as our pilot might suggest a different image. And it has advantages. In the old days, ships often found themselves trapped in the midst of storms that suddenly blew in. Nowhere to go but ride ’em out. When you fly, radar can often enable the pilot to avoid storms altogether, fly around them. I’ll bet that most of us would like Jesus to be that kind of pilot—steering us around life’s storms. But the fact is that Jesus doesn’t do that.

We see this in our text for this morning. The disciples find themselves in a storm, and it comes at the end of a very long day (vv 45–48a). Jesus has just fed five thousand folks. Word has just come of John the Baptist’s end. Huge crowds are looking to Jesus for healing. Even Jesus is tired; He sends the crowds and his disciples away so that He can be restored in a time of prayer. I imagine that the disciples assumed that Jesus, who created wind and rain and sea, could arrange some “smooth sailing” for them after a busy day like that. But the storm rises.

Jesus is busy praying on the shore, but apparently, He’s not praying for fair weather. Just as Jesus doesn’t always clear bad weather for us in our lives, Jesus doesn’t steer the disciples clear. The disciples seem frustrated about the storm, and they are confused about how God can provide seemingly endless food for thousands, but doesn’t seem to be consistent in His attention to our struggles. And we know that how we react to those storms in life can frustrate us and dangerously lead us away from Jesus.

Sometimes we believe that the fact that we face storms in life mean that God doesn’t care about us. Faith can be destroyed if storms are unexpected and misunderstood. At other times, we may be so overwhelmed by life’s storms that we just despair and forget that God is bigger than any storm. We convince ourselves that God may give us a leg up when we deal with difficulties, but He really doesn’t have the power to move mountains. And this leads us to the final way we may react to life’s storms in a way that leads us away from Jesus—We try to take care of storms ourselves. We never know what is coming in life, so it just makes sense that, when we can, we take back control from God for our decisions and our life’s direction, and we begin to become deaf to God’s calling as we use all our resources to prepare for the next storm that we know will come.

But when we believe that we won’t face storms, don’t believe that God has the ability to overcome our most difficult challenges, or we think that it’s ultimately up to us to handle what comes our way, Jesus shows us how our Father intends for us to face life’s unexpected difficulties.

Instead of steering His disciples and us clear of every storm, Jesus comes to them and us as the eye/I in the middle of them (vv 48b–50). “It is I!” Jesus was not just identifying himself, but identifying himself as true God, “I am.” It’s Jesus’ invitation to us to call on Him for help. And just as Jesus goes through the storm with His disciples, He sits in our storms with us. But the greatest and most threatening storm that Jesus has ever taken us all through occurred when the sky became black as a storm on the day we call Good Friday. On that day of darkness, earthquake and tremendous fear, Jesus was the hope, the I AM in the storm. For one of the men crucified next to Jesus, and for others who trembled as the earth shook and the sun failed, our Savior was the anchor in the storm, saying to us all: “Truly I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

And now, despite life’s storms, we live without fear, because Jesus’ death by taking away sin has reconciled us to God. And we can take heart as courageous Christians because death is not the end. So how do we react to storms? With faith. And how do we respond to Jesus when our storms are calmed? Verses 51-52 tell us that the disciples reacted with astonishment. That’s good. But we can do better than they did from there. Instead of having our hearts be hardened by doubting that God will be with us in the next storm, we can practice embracing our Savior in all the storms in life—beginning with the one we’re in and entrusting to Him the next. Remember and rejoice that Jesus is always the I—the I AM in the storm.